Germans Not Overdoing It Again

Honest. With their anti-Islamization bzw. (and) anti-Pegida hysteria, I mean.

Legida

Not with Bagida.
Not with Bärgida.
Not with Hagida.
Not with Legida.
Not with Muegida.
Not with Mvgida.
Not with Öz-Gida.
Not with Schwegida.
Not even with Merkel-Ida herself, for crying out loud.

Maybe it’s time to like gida life already, people.

Hard To Find German News Reports About This For Some Strange Reason

This firebombing last night of the Hamburger Morgenpost tabloid “that published Charlie Hebdo cartoons on the front page after the Paris massacre.”

Hamburger Morgenpost

Strange, don’t you think? You can find all kinds of stuff about anti-Pegida demonstrations and the German Defense Minister’s plans to put more women (like herself) at higher positions in the Bundeswehr and “the coming traffic chaos during the next vacation season” but other than that, well, it seems to be let’s-get-our-head-in-the-sand time again, as usual.

Maybe these terrorists know what they’re doing after all.

The regional tabloid daily, the Hamburger Morgenpost, had splashed three Charlie Hebdo cartoons on its front page after the Paris massacre, running the headline “This much freedom must be possible!”

No one was hurt in the attack in the northern port city, which police said occurred at about 1.20am on Sunday.

German Of The Day: Denkverbot

That means a ban on thinking. And that’s what this latest anti-Pegida or anti-anti-Islamization hysteria is all about.

PEGIDA

This is so German it hurts. This anti-anti-Islamization movement isn’t primarily a protest against the Pegida anti-Islamization movement in my view (although of course it is that, too), it is going through that classic German ritual of protesting against the German Nazi past by trying to compensate for the anti-Nazi movement that never took place when it could have made a difference. It’s never “anti-” enough when and where it needs to be here in Germany, in other words.

Are these 18,000+ Pegida protesters in Dresden all Nazis and racists? Of course not, although some of them undoubtedly will be. So why call them that? Especially when a recent study indicates that over 18 percent of the German population is hostile to Islam in the first place (is that all?). Do the political parties and media on the left – and elsewhere – profit from calling them Nazis? You tell me.

If they are all such idiots then why the hysteria? Do they possibly have something to say then after all? I’m slowly starting to wonder now.

One thing really does worry me about all these Pegida people, however. It is one of their slogans I heard about the other day: “Potatoes instead of Döner Kebab!” Now that’s scary. Maybe these folks do need to be stopped after all…

Um als Gesellschaft eine sinnvollere Reaktion zu finden, braucht es etwas Gelassenheit.

3000 Bombs In Berlin

Oddity 12. Germany is the only place on earth where huge underground bombs are regularly unearthed all around the country and this barely even makes second page news. In fact most Germans directly affected by these excavations are more annoyed by them than anything else. They grudgingly leave their homes for a few hours until the bomb crews disarm or detonate the damned things.

Bombs

Berlin authorities believe 3000 bombs still lurk beneath the capital and experts warn that some are growing increasingly dangerous as they rust and their fuses grow more brittle.

54 Tonnen Bomben, Granaten und Munition aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg sind im vergangenen Jahr in Berlin gefunden und entschärft worden. Seit Ende des Krieges vor 70 Jahren wurden nach Polizeiangaben mehr als 1,8 Millionen Sprengkörper vernichtet. Nach Schätzungen der zuständigen Stellen beim Senat liegen aber weiterhin 3000 Blindgänger aus dem Weltkrieg im Boden der Hauptstadt – auch in der Nähe wichtiger Verkehrsknotenpunkten wie Bahnhöfen oder dem Flughafen Tegel. Genau kann das aber niemand sagen.

Germans Worried About Being Liked

Or at least they’re suspicious about it. And rightly so, I say. I mean, wouldn’t you be worried if you were a German and people claimed that they liked you? As a country, I mean? It just doesn’t make any sense. It must be an international conspiracy of some kind and the very idea of being liked as a country that is Germany needs to be rejected out of hand before being thoroughly analyzed by German German popularity experts and then officially rejected out of hand for good, officially like.

German Popularity

Amazingly, people outside of this country like Germany. According to the English, Germany is the most popular country, even! Yes, the English! The very ones who used to hate us are now celebrating us. Only question is … why?

German Soldiers Build Schools

And roads. And they train the police and only do the things that other bad soldiers won’t do because they reek of goodness and niceness.

Kill Lists

And of course they also select insurgents to be placed on “kill lists” when nobody else is looking (so the bad soldiers can kill them later). But still.

A so-called “Target Support Cell” was based at the German headquarters of Mazar-e-Sharif. The group’s mission was, according to the report, “to collect information for the nomination of individual targets.”

Smart Guns Too Smart?

Mr. Mauch and his team developed a weapon that works using radio-frequency identification – the same technology employed in anti-theft tags on clothes in department stores. To fire its gun, you use an accompanying watch. When that watch is activated with a code and sitting on your wrist – or anywhere less than 25 centimetres away from the gun – the gun will fire. Otherwise, it’s a “just a piece of composite,” says Mr. Mauch, and useless as a weapon…

Smart Guns

A former long-time colleague of Mr. Mauch’s in the United States, who asked not to be named, called him a “first-rate” weapons designer but said he didn’t appreciate the American context. “The thing that worries me and millions like me is that the anti-gunners in our [government] … ONLY want this technology so they can restrict the rights of law-abiding gun owners,” the colleague wrote in an e-mail. “Would you want to bet your life on your smart phone or laptop? Me neither.”

More Strikes Like These Please

“Amazon is being striked – and nobody is noticing it.”

Strikes

Amazon employees (in Germany) have already been on strike for an entire week. The union Verdi is looking to disrupt the delivery of Christmas packages but our user survey (Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung) indicates that it isn’t having any luck.

This survey indicates that 86% of Amazon packages have come on time – the other mail-order companies only managed 73% of the time.

Von dem Streik bekommen die weitaus meisten Kunden nichts mit. Laut Umfrage ist Amazon sogar jetzt noch pünktlicher als die anderen Versandhändler. 86 Prozent der Amazon-Pakete aus unserer Umfrage sind pünktlich angekommen, von den anderen Versandhändlern waren es nur 73 Prozent.

Would Numbers Lie?

News products can be that way. On the one hand the numbers tell us today that the mood in the German economy has picked up yet again and that German companies are looking ahead to 2015 with renewed confidence.

Positive

At the same time we read how Germany’s National Office for Statistics has determined that one in every five Germans is a victim of poverty.

A contradiction? Not necessarily, I guess. That’s why everybody’s kind of happy sort of around here these days. And that’s why I, for one, believe everything I read.

Die Stimmung in der deutschen Wirtschaft hat sich im Dezember erneut verbessert: Der Ifo-Index legte zum zweiten Mal zu.

The Fall Of The Berlin Mall Of Berlin

Jeepers. That didn’t take very long.

Mall of Berlin

This is not just any mall, mind you, but the hubristically named Mall of Berlin—the largest Germany’s capital has ever seen, including not only shops but (as yet unfinished) apartments and a hotel. And guess what? While it’s only been open since the autumn, the whole project is already bombing…

It’s not that Berlin’s government and developers don’t have the guts to take on major projects to transform the city. They just really suck at them.